Culms obtusely angled, 110 cm × 5 mm, glabrous. Leaves: sheaths with red-brown spots, to 60 cm, backs green or red tinged, fronts membranous, apex concave to V-shaped; blades 120 cm × 7-18 mm, leathery, margins revolute, prominently keeled, antrorsely scabrous on margins and keel, glaucous when young, glossy adaxially, surface papillose abaxially. Inflorescences with 5-20 spikes, 25-80 cm; pistillate spikes 4-10, 3-13 cm × 10-12 mm. Scales red-brown with broad yellow-brown midrib, oblong, 3.5 × 1 mm, margins hyaline, apex acuminate or retuse, awn 0.5-3 mm, ciliate. Anthers 3-4 mm. Perigynia pale brown, with uniformly distributed red-brown spots, somewhat flattened to strongly inflated distally, 3.5-4.8 × 1.5-2.5 mm, base cuneate, apex obtuse, somewhat glaucous; beak red-brown, flared, abaxially obliquely bidentately cut, 0.5 mm. Achenes dark brown, stipitate, ellipsoid, 2 × 1.2 mm.

Fruiting Apr-Jun. Stream banks, wet seeps, sometimes on serpentine; lower than 600 m in Calif.; Ariz., Calif., N.Mex.; Mexico.

Carex spissa has been divided into three taxa, distinguished in the extreme as C. spissa with glabrous, few-veined, strongly inflated perigynia; C. ultra with glabrous, veined, flattened perigynia; and C. seatoniana with hispid, veined, somewhat inflated perigynia and short-awned or acuminate scales. Intermediates between all three varieties are more frequent than the typical extremes (F. J. Hermann 1970). No consistent patterns of variation in perigynium or scale morphology can be determined or correlated with geographic distribution although considerable variation, particularly in perigynium morphology, is present. Further research based on analysis of variation at the population level may provide insights into relationships and differentiation within the problematic taxon. Carex spissa is distinguished from the related C. pringlei L. H. Bailey by the obovoid, rather than ovoid or elliptic, perigynia, and the abrupt, rather than tapering, beak as well as by habitat. Carex pringlei appears to be restricted to wet, saline soils and is not known from north of Mexico.

Common Name: Cochise sedge

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Graminoid

General: Stout erect stems arising from singly or in small clumps from stout creeping rhizome, stems to 2 m tall, basal sheaths reddish to brown and scaly.

Vegetative: Leaves flat but channeled at the base with a double crease, 6-12 mm wide, serrulate along the margins.

Inflorescence: Unisexual spikes, with linear staminate spikes reaching to 12 cm long, the pistillate spikes cylindroid to 15 cm long, lower spikes sometimes androgynous; basally subtended by leaflike bract that can exceed the inflorescence; pistillate scales scabrous awned, reddish brown to green or pale yellow in the center, perigynia with a minute beak less than 0.5 mm long; achenes three sided, blackish.

Ecology: Found in moist soils that are sandy to gravelly, or in marshy sites from 5,000-6,000 ft (1524-1829 m); flowers

Notes: This is the largest sedge in the southwest, reaching 2 meters in height, and has stiff coriaceous leaves with saw-like edges. Its inflorescence is usually also robust, with several long terminal staminate spikes and several long lateral pistillate spikes. See notes under Carex hystericina and C. thurberi for further separating features. It has ladder-fibrillose basal sheaths like Carex senta and C. endlichii, but those species have flattened perigynia that are just a little longer than wide, and two stigmas, while C. ultra has inflated perigynia that are more than twice as long as wide, and 3 stigmas. FNA subsumes this taxon into Carex spissa, of which it has also been considered a variety in some treatments. (Notes: Max Licher and Glenn Rink 2012)

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Carex is the classical Latin name for the genus, while ultra is Latin for beyond or in excess, probably a reference to its size.

Synonyms: Carex spissa var. ultra

Editor: SBuckley, 2010